So the school run this morning was chaotic but fun. I often don’t have the camera ready when in the middle of a traffic jam or I can’t get a good angle to take a photo. These pics below aren’t great but you can see a bit of the madness. The traffic lights were on the blink again and there was 1 cop in the middle of the chaos trying to create a way through but without much success….
In the paper today there were more figures from a recent Census that were kind of enlightening. They love data over here so I often end up skimming over it in the news but some of today’s info which is specific to Delhi was interesting:
1. 25% of households in Delhi do not have drinking water facilities within their premises
2. 41% of households do not have a flush toilet which is connected to a piped sewer system
3. 37% of households do not have any personal mode of transport.
So it might be the capital city and house Parliament and a whole entourage of diplomats and “VIP’s” but there are still some significant development issues that need addressing right on its doorstep.
Two weeks ago I took Abhishek (Harvey’s best friend from the village school) to the dispensary to get his eyes tested again. He’d been tested previously and was told he needed to return to have drops put in his eyes to dilate his pupils. So he came with me one morning and was unbelievably compliant. For 40mins he sat in this chair with his eyes closed while the drops did their thing….
I thought I’d distract him with some music from my ipod but clearly our genres are poles apart and he gave the ear phones back to me pretty soon after this pic.
Then he was asked to read the eye chart and with a couple of lenses in place he could do it….
Yesterday I collected the glasses from the dispensary and today Poonam ma’am will give them to Abhishek. It took 3 weeks – not unusual for these parts – but we got there and the best bit is that it didn’t cost his family a rupee!!
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